


What I Remember (is what you can't forget)

by Severa



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Reality, Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Background Relationships, Established Relationship, F/M, Ficlet, Gen, I just really wanted more magic user interaction, Maybe possibly Loki/Wanda, we'll see how it goes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-09-05
Packaged: 2020-02-16 11:41:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18690766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severa/pseuds/Severa
Summary: Wanda gives it her all. Thanos will never forget her.





	1. Chapter 1

The Universe took note when Wanda Maximoff confronted the Mad Titan.

"You took everything from me," said she who could raze the Earth, standing on the precipice of madness.

The Watchers dared not blink.

"I don't even know you,” Thanos dared to say.

In her mind the chaos slipped away. Or, rather, it shifted to a new place, no longer all around her but in the palms of her hands, the whites of her eyes. Scarlet vision made the world brighter, sharper – so clear that she felt calm, though her entire body tensed to the point of vibrating, the pain of a thousand universes on her mind. _Her_ pain. _Vision's_ pain. The voices of the dead rang loud in her ears.

"You will."

And, _oh_ , how he would. Rage propelled her off the ground. Agony ripped craters from the Earth to hurl at his terrible, ugly form – the body she intended to rip to shreds. Thanos the fool, unworthy of his might.

Fortunately, none were mightier than her.

"They don't remember," she said, no longer able to scream after all this time, "They don't remember _five years—"_  Her feet found the ground and she twisted at the hips, bent strangely to will terrible magics at his chest. "—in that stone."

Thanos blocked them with his double edged blade, almost impossibly, but it didn't stop her approach. It didn't stop the aguish in her fingertips, the fury of her magic. Every blast of power shattered and dented his armour.

"But I do."

Her fist closed and Thanos' feet were pulled from under him. Red snakes burst from the rubble and anchored him there – she bore down on it as he pressed up, closer now, mere feet from him and steadily closing the distance.

"I remember," she said, harsh and cold as she stared into the eyes of what seemed to be nothing more than a frightened giant. "Them, sleeping. The dead, watching." With a howl he burst free and she flexed her fingers, twisted her wrists, delfected his flailing sword with a wall of red magic. "They're gold... and angry."

He lunged. She dodged. A voice rang sharp in the back of her mind – _To your left, witchling_ – and she avoided the swipe of a massive beast. A streak of red energy beheaded it and she turned in time to block Thanos' blade once more, catching it between her hands with waves of power.

"You think I care?" Thanos hissed, bearing down on her. "About your pain, witch?"

"No." Her voice shook with the stress of her defense, but the voice came again, as it often did.

_Remember. Ground yourself._

Not her thoughts, but the voice of another. A dead soul who'd struck a bargain with her. Hitched a ride out. They were entangled. Almost one and the same. Like a brother long gone...

She twisted her heels, planted them in the bloody ground and there it was, waiting: the threads of energy and magic in the Earth, easily shared, manipulated with a force of will. Thanos rocketed back at the blast that burst from her and skidded over rubble like a stone over water.

_Very good._

"I made friends. I learned," she said, in a weary sort of way. Her elbows buckled and her wrists stretched as she reached out, taking him by ankles and arms. "And they care about _your_ pain."

He thrashed as she thrust him into the sky, belly up, and pressed magic up against his spine, pulling down on his limbs. He was screaming something. She didn't care what it was.

 _Listen_ , warned the voice, but she would not. _Do not wait._

She wanted to enjoy this. She wanted him to feel every sinew snapping, every muscle tearing and bone disjointing, breaking— every second of agony. This was what he deserved.

"Rain fire! Do—" He bent and broke, strained against her might and felt fear. Knew desperation in its highest notes and felt his voice crack. "Do it now!"

In another time, another realm, the Watchers knew that this moment would be different. Another Universe would watch her fall and take note of a desperate man instead. But this one would see victory in magic, not in iron. It saw a woman torn down and reborn in rage.

So here, when she might've been thrown off her feet and Thanos' might've escaped her wrath, instead there was only light. A green wash of magic above red. Wanda's panicked gaze flew over her shoulder to see her ghost, haunting her in corporeal form.

Loki, son of Odin, blood of Laufey, brother of Thor, slain by Thanos, stood at her back, looking over his own shoulder at her with his hands aloft and an impossible shield cast above them. A emerald ring on Wanda's finger glittered brightly beneath it.

 _"Wear this and I'll teach you everything I know,"_ he'd propositioned, standing with her among the sleeping bodies of her friends. In the golden realm of death, of not-being, there were plenty who did not sleep. The truly dead. His sort. It seemed so much longer than five years ago. _"You're stone-touched, my dear. You might as well spend your time wisely."_ He held a ring out to her of a snake biting its own tail, eyes encrusted with emeralds. The only solid thing in a world of golden ghosts.  _"If it's magic you wish to fight Thanos with, you may as well learn to use it properly."_

"Well?" In the present, a missile exploded above them, casting no light or shadow across his transparent face. She hadn't seen him smile like this before.

Wanda swallowed, managed her breathing, and her mentor nodded.

"Go on, then."

Thanos cracked, split at his seams, and, suddenly, screamed no more.

Chaos bled out of her and back into the world.

It was done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not exactly fix-it fic, but a stray thought during a second viewing of _Endgame._
> 
> I've got a few more Loki inserts coming, but there was no way in hell I was taking that moment away from Wanda. She needs more love in the movies.


	2. Chapter 2

_In the golden ocean within Infinity, souls floated between waves made of neither air nor water, suspended in a state of uncertainty. They were gone from whence they came, but not dead. Only stuck between existences by a mad man pretending at Godhood._

_Loki - dead, truly dead, but not one to bend his knee to the likes of Death - stood with the few waking. Those who had been touched by the stones that now trapped them in this strange void. Thrown from the cliffs, perhaps, or made new and whole by their power._

_“Your time will come,” he said, gazing on the tired lines of grief on the witchling’s face. “They’re not the type to rest easy.”_

* * *

Tony caught Wanda before she fell. Her knees buckled just as he hit the ground, spraying rocks and dust from under his metal boots, and he had her in his arms by the time she swayed sideways. Just in time to watch the red flicker out of her eyes.

“Hey, hey-”

“Tony.”

There was another loud landing as Thor came skidding over a hill of debris, Stormbreaker thrown on his back as he stumbled across metal scraps. The white light of Carol’s continued fight above cast him in strange shadows, electricity cracking across his chest as he spun about.

“I saw it— _I saw it_. Where is he?”

“Thor?” Tony tried, but he wasn’t listening. Others were starting to close in all around them as he shouted at the empty air.

“Loki!”

 _Loki?_ But then Wanda rocked forwards again and Tony steadied her, distracted from Thor as he tried to get her back on her feet. She was more important. “Hey, woah. Take it easy.”

“Is he dead?” she wondered, palming the chest of his armor, hooking her fingers around the open seam at his neck. Her rings slid awkwardly against the metal. “Tony—”

“He’s dead.”

Steve’s voice. Mjolnir gave a familiar metallic ring as he let it drop to the ground at his feet, standing beside the torso that had been Thanos. Banner lumbered up alongside with a severed, purple-grey arm in his unburnt hand. The Infinity Gauntlet slid off without the slightest resistance.

“Where is he?” Thor was still saying, and then Strange floated down from the skies.

The terror and confusion in his eyes was enough to send a chill down Tony’s spine. This had to be right, this had to be the one— One in fourteen million, he wouldn’t have that look on his face if this was the _only one in fourteen million—_

He hit the ground with a grace none of them possessed and put his hands on Wanda’s face, looking into her eyes with an impossible expression.

“What did you do?” 

* * *

_“Will you be ready when the time comes?”_ _It was an odd question when they stood in a land absent of time, lacking the very concept, but no less apt. Loki watched the witchling in front of him, polite enough not to make mention of the utter rage in her eyes. “You weren’t ready before.”_

_That rage flared even brighter and it was one of the most breathtaking things he’d ever had the privilege to witness. So much power in such a tiny, fragile body. Red anger, scarlet despair; the makings of infinity lashing around her hands. But she couldn’t hurt him now. No one could._

_“I can teach you,” he tempted._

_“You tried to take over the world,” she argued, and he couldn’t help but wonder how much more successful that task would’ve been if he’d had someone like her at his side. “You nearly killed a whole city-”_

_“Yes, and so did you. With far more success.” Loki threw her own words back in her face with practiced ease and watched her recoil, but didn’t pause long enough to let shame blossom. “And now we must kill a Titan. Far harder than destroying a city. Can you do it on your own?”_

_“Can you?” she hissed. If she expected to insult him, he’d disappoint her with his smile._

_“That’s precisely the point.”_

* * *

Thanos’ remaining army retreated, but they wouldn’t get far with Carol and the Valkyrie in pursuit. Those who hadn’t followed them lingered in the craters of their destruction, what had been the Avenger’s home leveled to nothing more than scraps and mud.

“I swear, I saw it,” Thor said to Steve, practically brimming with lightning. It was hard to discern his grief from his rage. “By Bor’s blood, if he’s still alive— if he’s still…”

“I believe you when you say you saw it, buddy, but... Loki’s gone.” Steve assured him, ever so kind. Banner nodded his massive head. “There was a lot of magic being thrown around. Coulda been anyone.”

Wanda did her very best not to look at them from where she sat. The ghost of Loki had no such reservations, hands folded between his knees as he sat next to her in the rubble and watched his brother fume.

Shuri sprayed her hands with another cold blast of medicine, sealing up the cuts and scrapes across her skin. The young Spider-boy was being looked over by Rhodey and Ms. Potts. Clint was laying out flat on the ground at her feet, talking quietly on the phone with his family. There were others, too; people she barely knew or didn’t recognize. The ones beginning to pick up the pieces of their broken lives. The Black Panther standing solitary with Okoye, talking to the beads on his wrist with confident purpose.

(Vision was gone, Vision was dead. Forever. She couldn’t save him. She could save the universe but she couldn’t save him.)

More worrying or distracting than the rest was that Doctor Strange and Tony Stark kept away from any group, conversing in harsh, hushed tones like the fight wasn’t done.

 _“The dead don’t abide by time. Can’t be seen moving through it.”_ Loki offered, attuned to her thoughts and feelings, as she was to his. _“They worry this outcome is a farce.”_

 _Is it?_ It felt hollow. Empty. Everything was right again, but somehow wrong.

_“I think not.”_

She thanked Shuri shortly and leaned back against a sheet of metal laid flat into the side of her dirt mound, closing her eyes. She found herself fidgeting with the ring Loki had given her, brushing her fingers over the sharply cut emeralds in the head of the snake.

 _Should I tell them?_ She paused as thunder grumbled overhead, finally beginning to dissipate into the edges of the horizon with the danger past. The sun would soon shine down. _Tell him?_

Loki finally looked away from his war torn brother, a different man than the one he’d died for five years ago.

_“Not yet.”_

* * *

_He committed his soul to one of the many rings on her fingers. It changed to suit him: a snake coiled and biting its own tail between sharp fangs._

_"Wear this and I'll teach you everything I know," he propositioned, standing with her among the sleeping bodies of her friends. The sorcerer Strange slept soundly beside them, not so incredible as she. "You're stone-touched, my dear. You might as well spend your time wisely." He held the ring back to her, blatantly offering all of himself to a child; hoping for the chance to feel the sun on his face again. Norns willing. "If it's magic you wish to fight Thanos with, you may as well learn to use it properly."_

_He almost expected her to deny him outright. Yet she took his soul into her hands and nodded, steeling herself for the bargain they’d just struck._

_“Let’s get to work.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise! Didn't expect to continue this, but the mood struck. Tell me your thoughts!


End file.
